If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Project go anywhere

so ive had my summit for about 5 months now and its been a fun truck but in mostly stock form i need more.

this project is going to be geared at making the summit more of an all purpose truck (more then it already is). something i can go fast with,"play" with on a track,go in the trails,and do some minor crawling.i want it so i can go from one place to another with out switching any parts to make it better for one place or the other.it will be a "GO ANYWHERE" truck.

this project isnt intended to go over the top but just to refine it a bit,make it better for what i need. i have parts on the way,some here and some yet to be ordered so this will be ongoing for a bit but dont worry , i will be running the truck as the project grows. got to test rite ? i will also be including some minor mods ive already done that you can find in my summit review thread.

one of the troubles ive been having with my summit is the drive shafts.more specifically the pins in the drive shafts keep snapping.

so since i had a merv laying around i robbed the shafts off that as the summit ones broke and they seemed to hold up.only thing is i would be using one merv half mated with a summit half. i never tried the full merv shaft together(inner and outer)

so i ordered a set of merv shafts off ebay...

and compared them to the summit shafts..

same total length..

the only difference was the male shaft on the summit was maybe 1-2 mm longer. i dont think this will cause a problem.

after installing them they fit fine, i just dont like the angle the u joints are at and im sure thats why traxxas changed the design on the summit, to bad they didnt do their homework on the pins.

i wont know for sure how they hold up till i get everything back together and tested.

so one of the week spots in my truck is the steering...so what i did is went and bought a hitec hs-85 mg. they seem to get good reviews...

the only thing i didnt like is that it is not water proof like the stocker. so time to waterproof it.

what i did was took the screws out that hold the case together and then i carefully pulled the case halves apart just a bit. i then filled the crack where the two halves were separated with rtv. use just a small amount , you dont want it getting in the servo. i then put the case halves back together. **note** there are two parts that have to come apart. one at the top of the case and one at the bottom. the finished servo should look like this :

set it aside and let it dry.

when you put the servo horn on use a small amount of black grease around the spline to seal it. this will keep water out there.

there are other methods of waterproofing but this is the method i chose.

i already did this mod back when i 1st got the summit but i think its an important one to include for others to see here in this thread.

the diffs..when stock they have almost nothing in them for fluid.atleast mine didnt. see pic below:

this allows for way to much diff slip for a "go every where" type truck. so what i did was bought some ofna diff lock. its a really thick diff fluid.as for a weight comparison i couldnt tell ya. this is a link to the diff lock :http://www.rcplanet.com/Ofna_Lock_Lube_p/ofn10230.htm

i put in enough so the diffs were about 3/4 full. i still get diff slip in extreme situations. works good.

ok i have some updates and a tease.. as i said before i had to scrap the red servo horn as it sat to high up and would interfere with the next mod. so i switched it out for a blue hitec one. i had to drill a new hole and cut it shorter but it fits.

so whats this next mod ? well i noticed before when i ran my truck through trails and over rocks it would easily get hung up on things because of how the bottom of the chassis is shaped. the channel just grabs onto things. you can kind of see here the scratches and nicks in the chassis from that happening.

so to hopefully keep that to a minimum i found something that was meant for another car that would work great for this application (fingers crossed). here it is. it a TBONE center skid plate for the ken block rally car. the front and back are curved up so rocks and other items should not get hung up on it. its made from a nice slippery plastic so i hope that helps the truck with sliding over things... one pic for now..

ill get more pics of it mounted and how it looks from the side. i also have more items coming in the mail...

well i had some time to work on the summit. i had some problems so read on to find out what....

when i was mounting the skid plate i noticed it hit the hitec servo as the servo arm sits a little higher then the stock one did. so when i mounted the skid i used to small 1/8" spacers on the front screws to kick the skid up just a bit. good idea? i thought so but as i tightened the screws down i heard a snap...one of the spacers broke and it pulled the screw through the skid plate ! the skid is pretty thin where it is countersunk, so if ya get one be careful with this part. it was totally my fault though.

pics of the screw pulled through (top screw in pic)

here is the skid mounted after i glued a washer on the other side of the hole to help keep the screw from pulling through.hopefully the glue holds..

side view. this is why i got the skid, i like how it angles up at the front and back..

close up of the front angle..

the only thing i dont like about the skid is the gap in the back between it and the rear skid plate. we will see if that causes a problem during testing.

so i did some testing. the servo works great,its actually over working my servo saver.i might need to shim the spring to make it tighter.i also tested the skid plate and that also works great. i ran two packs through it.i ran it over a number of different obstetrical.i went from jumping to the rocks and everything in between. i noticed the most improvement over the rocks though. no its not a crawler by no means but with the skid it gets over the rocks better and it doesnt let the chassis's tunnel catch rocks like it use to.the skid makes it possible to do some minor "crawling".

the drive shafts seem to be holding up so far but i think its to early to really judge them. i dont think they are binding like i thought they would.

i havent tested the cage yet but thats soon and i have some more ideas also...

here is a pic of the skid plate after two packs. you can see how much it blocked from the scratches on it.

i took out the truck today and was impressed with how it ran. the cage i thought for sure was going to make the truck very top heavy but it wasnt to noticeable while bashing. get this, it helped it on the rocks. its still not a crawler but the added weight of the cage helped out. it can do lines now that it couldnt before.

i just put these on and it works great....have used stock batt and 2s 7.4 lipos.

Darn those are some heavy duty drive shafts - keep us updated on how well they are working for you. Another reason I love the 1/16 vehicles, the parts are much less expensive than the full sized equivalents.

Excellent thread....our summit is still bone stock aside from LED lighting and I dont have any spare driveshafts for it in the pit box. It is good to know that I can use MErv parts in a pinch. Saves me from buying spares I dont need!

all the mods ive done are holding up great and the truck is a blast to drive.no some other parts are needing attention. rear shocks keep leaking out and the rear pillow ball cups are getting sloppy. so i think those might be the next upgrades.

sorry for the lack of updates. the truck is still running and running strong.its been beat on the rocks, jumped and fully submerged in water....and still running ! the skid plate is holding up great and i HIGHLY recommend one. like i said before the truck is starting to show signs of wear. the pillow ball cups are getting sloppy resulting in some odd camber and the rear shocks leak. the front servo saver bushings are wore out and the result from that is crappy steering. ill get some close up pics of how the truck sits now , abused and loving it.

im using the stock nimh. for what i do its more then enough. i havent even thrown in my 2s lipo from my merv.

Thank ya for the reply.. I'm guessing that the 3s option is just there as more of a fun, way too fast thing and for stressing out the weak links.. I ran it the other day after swapping the rears out with stock merv shafts and on the stock nimh packs ran in parallel it held up just fine I just want the run time out of a lipo.. I guess I could put it into training mode and run lipo's and it would probally be still as fast as stock.. and better run times.. hmmmm Anyway thanks again for your info on here